


she's different

by dryadfiona



Series: Requests [8]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/F, i'm pretty sure it's canon compliant anyway!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28572348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dryadfiona/pseuds/dryadfiona
Summary: Chloe, reeling from discovering her partner is the Devil himself, helps Dan clean his apartment before leaving for Rome. They find something of Charlotte's.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Original Charlotte Richards
Series: Requests [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2148891
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26





	she's different

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RenLuthor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenLuthor/gifts).



Dan's apartment looks like a bomb hit it.

There's no rhyme or reason to its destruction, no path it seemed to follow. The glass table is shattered, dishes are scattered about in places no one would choose to eat, and the whole place smells strongly of lavender, like six wax warmers all burning at once.

"It's an essential oil," Dan mutters. "Ella thought I should try it, but I got home and just--"

Sure enough, there's a small blue bottle cracked in the corner of the bedroom that Chloe can see. Her eyes water, it smells so _strong_.

"I appreciate the offer, but I don't need you here," Dan says, voice shifting from vulnerable to pissed off in a heartbeat. It's the same way he'd acted when they were almost-but-not-quite-separated. Chloe's learned to see through it, if not to forgive it. 

"I'm here to help," Chloe says, voice firm and brooking no arguments.

"I--"

"Please," Chloe says.

Dan shuts up. Chloe hasn't asked him for something like that in awhile, after all. Probably wondering why she wants to help him clean this clusterfuck up so badly. She'd explain, but if Chloe even starts to think about her partner, all scarred skin and red eyes and standing over a body--

Well, then she'll collapse and never get up again. She needs to get _away_ and figure this out with some distance from Dan and his anger and Ella and her crisis of faith (and boy, how would she react if she knew?) and Linda's quiet understanding that's all for _nothing_ because she has no idea what Chloe's dealing with.

So until her plane ride comes around and Trixie's all packed, she'll get this apartment fucking _sparkling_.

Dan moves to sweep up the glass without another word. Chloe decides getting that essential oil is step one.

It takes a long time to clean up, because it doesn't soak up as much as Chloe would like it to and the smell lingers long after her hands are raw from scrubbing the floor. But it's good work, taxing enough that her thoughts don't wander too much, mindless enough that she doesn't have to sit and think, because right now, she's not sure she has the brainpower.

When that's done, Dan's busy picking up what looks like food old enough to be its own new form of life, so Chloe heads over to the office area. It's one of the hardest hit; Charlotte's papers strewn everywhere, a photo of her sitting in the middle of the room with no discernible reason as to why.

Chloe picks up the photo and just--stares at it, for awhile. Charlotte's smile is tight, forced in this picture, but she looks awkward, not horrified. It's from when she officially left her firm to be a DA and Dan had insisted on celebrating despite everyone's awkwardness. Well, everyone but Luci--

She puts the picture down on the nearest flat surface and kneels down to pick up debris, consciously forcing herself to stop thinking about anything other than her friend Dan and his pain and how much having a clean apartment will help him. So she sorts through law textbooks worth more than any book she owns and romances she knows are Dan's guilty pleasure and cables and a bunch of other random detritus, some of which definitely didn't start in this room.

Eventually, her fingers close around a USB, and she wonders. It's not one of her work ones--those had been carefully labelled and color-coded, and this silver doesn't match the system. More evidence on Pierce, maybe? They could certainly use it; a lot of the department hadn't bought that he was really the Sinnerman, and while Chloe's not about to get fired, that plus her vacation doesn't look great. 

The computer is unharmed aside from some brown stain on the monitor that comes away easily when Chloe wipes at it with a paper towel, so she plugs it in and waits for it to load. The device is labelled as SanDisk Cruzer 3D7, and there's no file labelled "sex tape" or anything else equally traumatizing. There aren't any documents on the file, just photos, each IMG_1, IMG_2, IMG_3 and so on and so forth.

So she clicks one.

The first thing that pops up is a photo of Charlotte and Ella, equally disgruntled. Ella's wearing a Santa dress and matching hat and has her arms around Charlotte, who's limited her holiday spirit to a soft green sweater. Come to think of it, Chloe's not even sure if Charlotte celebrated Christmas.

It hits, all over again, that she'll never be able to ask Charlotte that. That she'll never be able to find out if this picture happened because of Charlotte's quest to be good, to avoid Hell--

_oh God, Hell, and Lucifer, and--_

\--or if she just wasn't the type for office holiday parties. Maybe she had a menorah at home, maybe she secretly loved to bake Christmas cookies, maybe she hates and has always hated the rabid consumerism of American Christmas. But the point is, Chloe will never be able to ask, ever.

Except, if she's being honest with herself, she's worried more about the fact that she will be able to, about the undeniable proof that there is an afterlife.

Two afterlives. A Heaven and a Hell.

"Chloe," Dan calls from the doorway, and Chloe flinches like she's been struck.

"What is that?" Dan asks. His tone isn't that same raw vulnerability as it was earlier, like an exposed nerve, or the anger. It's quiet, resigned. Chloe's not sure if that's better enough. She's not sure she's a very good judge.

"Photos of Charlotte," Chloe mumbles. "From that holiday party."

Dan comes over and doesn't say anything. Chloe studies the lines of his face, almost as familiar to her as her own. The clenched jaw--anger, but not at her, and he's trying to hold back. The wet eyes--grief, painful and fresh. The hands, clenched in fists so tight the knuckles are white. 

"I'm sorry," Chloe says.

"Yeah," Dan says. "Yeah, I need to go."

Before Chloe can say anything, like "I'm here for you" or "let's talk about this" or "Dan, this is literally your apartment", he's out of the room and slamming the front door, and Chloe's left alone with the mess and the lingering scent of lavender and the photos.

Chloe clicks through more. Dan and Charlotte, looking away from each other with a sweet sort of awkwardness like a schoolyard crush. Charlotte and Pierce, and something in Chloe's gut clenches when she sees Pierce smiling, knowing it was fake, knowing everything about the photo was fake, knowing his name wasn't even Pierce, it was Cain.

She clicks to the next photo before she can think herself into a panic attack, but that turns out to be a mistake, because the next photo is Charlotte and Lucifer. Lucifer's wearing clothes that could barely be called clothes, let alone work-appropriate, and his Santa hat has devil horns, and Charlotte looks like she's not sure whether to be amused or horrified.

Chloe, choosing horrified, shuts the computer off entirely and pulls out the USB. She hopes, vaguely, that the pictures aren't damaged, placing the USB down on the desk with more force than necessary. Dan doesn't deserve that.

On autopilot, she heads to the kitchen and opens the cabinet immediately to the left of the fridge. Sure enough, there's alcohol on the top shelf, just like there was in their old place. It's all relatively mild alcohol except for tequila in the very back, and Chloe almost drops a bottle of red wine trying to grab it, but eventually, she's able to sit in the corner of the kitchen, between the island and the cabinets, and drink straight from the bottle.

It's bad friend etiquette, but frankly, Hell's real, and she deserves some time to process.

The alcohol burns on the way down, and Chloe sits and thinks about why the hell her life turned out like this. Because of a case with a singer with drugs in her purse, because something about her had captured the Devil himself's attention, because when she shot him, he bled, and he must have lied to her, he must have been delusional, but he wasn't.

And Charlotte's dead, and she can't ask him what the fuck is going on with her and _God,_ capital-G, because she's dead. Did she marry God? Are her kids the second and third comings of Christ? She'd met them, they didn't seem all that saintlike, but _clearly,_ she's not a very good judge of character.

Charlotte. She's dead. In Heaven, probably. Lucifer had said as much, and he doesn't lie. That's the hardest thing to wrap her head around, and she takes another swig from the bottle.

She's kissed the Devil. She's shot the Devil. She wonders if one will redeem her from the other, and she's not sure which one she needs redeeming from. 

God, she--

No.

Fuck, she wishes Charlotte were here. Charlotte, a human (probably) who undeniably knew about the celestial and all things divine. Must have. Lucifer called her Mum and Dan told her that Amenadiel was jealous of how close his brother was with her and Lucifer had told her she was his father's ex.

Well. If nothing else, at least she can tell all those preachy assholes who came out of the woodwork during her divorce that God has ex-wives too.

Chloe laughs hard enough that she starts coughing. She's not anywhere close to drunk yet, alcohol hasn't had nearly enough time to kick in and she's only had a couple swigs, but she feels loose and uninhibited anyway. In a way that seems slightly more unhinged than her normal drunkenness, but again. Hell.

Hell. Lucifer. Her friend being dead. Photos of her she hadn't seen before. Photos from beyond the grave.

The worst part of it all, funny in a sort of tragicomic way, is that she thinks if Charlotte was here, she could have handled this. If any other human knew, if she could talk about it with someone other than an angel or a demon or the literal Devil, she wouldn't have needed to literally flee the country about this. Maybe, anyway. She'd ask Linda, always so calm and straightforward, but fuck, she couldn't do this to anyone else.

Charlotte. Charlotte's exactly who she needs, but Cain killed her. Her ex-fiance killed her. She's not sure which part of that freaks her out more, or if it's just the fact that her ex-fiance is Cain.

And she'd broken up with him for the Devil.

Chloe laughs again, and someone knocks on the door. Not Dan; the door's unlocked. Some concerned neighbor wondering why someone's having a loud breakdown next door. She puts her head between her knees like she's waiting for an impending disaster and forces herself to breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. After a few minutes, her breathing slows, closer to having just run up a few flights of stairs than to hyperventilating. 

Dan'll be back soon. She probably shouldn't get drunk in his kitchen. He'll ask her what's wrong and she'll burst into tears and/or start yelling, and she needs to not be stopped from her flight to Rome. She knows what she saw. 

So she gets up and puts the bottle away, assuming Dan will just think he drank a little too much and forgot about it one night. It wouldn't be that surprising, given everything. It makes her feel like shit that she's going to lie to him when he's in such a bad place, but he doubts finding out the truth about Charlotte's world is going to make him feel better.

As she gets back to cleaning, her thoughts keep drifting back to Charlotte. Another human who Knew with a capital-K. Her friend. Someone who helped her put away the bad guys. 

She misses her. Of course she misses her. But maybe she'll see her again. For all her confusion, she doesn't think Lucifer would let her spend a day in Hell if he could avoid it.

Then again, who the hell knows what she'll find in Rome?


End file.
